Currents Of Eternity
by Winter Sapphire
Summary: 257 years old, Claire stumbles across an old chest that’s filled with buried memories... Claire-centric, Peter/Claire, very slight Claire/OC


Title: Currents Of Eternity  
Characters/Paring: Claire-centric, Peter/Claire, very slight Claire/OC  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 1029  
Spoilers/Warnings: There's one blatant reference to the first half of S3, but other than that nothing.  
Summary: 257 years old, Claire stumbles across an old chest that's filled with buried memories...  
Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes. :(  
A/N: The chest is mostly metaphoric, except for the... like two times it's not. When I started writing this tonight I had some semblance of a plot in my head, but it kind of degenerated and became more of a collection of thoughts and, well, memories. So I guess you can picture this fic as a symbolic chest full of old trinkets and worn-down shirts and faded pictures. That's what I had in mind, anyway. :D Enjoy!

* * *

It's been so long since she's thought about them. About him.

------

It was never Claire's intention to push the memories of her past lives to the back of her mind, but that's what ended up happening. There's a pain to never aging, a loneliness that eats you up from the heart and consumes you from the inside out until there's nothing left of you but a shell. Adam Monroe had been proof of that, until Arthur Petrelli had had his way. He had thought himself a god, above mankind and reigning through the universe on a chariot of fire.

Claire had never wanted to become like that. She had tried so hard to hold on to the life and the people she had known, but in the end she found that she was the same. She hasn't lived long enough yet to believe herself above all others, but she has begun to feel its onset, that niggling sensation that keeps her from forming relationships with others, that pushes her away from anyone who might stick around long enough care.

------

Claire opens the chest with shaking hands, and as the old box creaks open and sputters the dust of ages in every which direction, she swears she can almost see him smiling at her, that lopsided grin that could light up the night even in the darkest hour.

------

It's been well over 150 years since she's been to New York. The city holds so many memories that she's forced herself to stay away ever since Peter had died, an old man with that forever-loving twinkle in his eyes.

"You're all that's left, Claire," he had whispered, shaking, wrinkled hands reaching up in spite of the pain to wipe the tears from her eyes. "Still as beautiful as you've always been. You keep ahold of yourself, okay? Promise me that."

There's a pang in her chest. He should never have died. He should've lived on with her forever, just the two of them, fighting the good fight side-by-side throughout eternity.

------

On her 21st birthday Peter bought her a drink. The bartender shot her a look, disbelieving, but for once Claire hadn't cared that she still looked like she was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, because _he_ was here with her, celebrating another year.

"You only turn 21 once, Claire," he had told her with way too solemn of an expression, and she had giggled at him, sloshing her drink a bit clumsily. She couldn't get drunk, but she felt a little light-headed anyway.

"Says you. I'm going to probably have twenty-one 21st birthdays. Maybe _more_."

"You're full of it," Peter slurred, leaning into her shoulder with a grin.

"_You're_ drunk," Claire countered, slinging her arm around his shoulders as she fished her camera out of her purse. "Sit up. I want a picture."

He complied, practically pulling her into his lap as he wrapped an arm around her waist. The bartender snapped the picture distractedly, before they were ready, forever capturing their bemused and carefree expressions on film.

That night, on the quiet taxi ride back to her campus, he kissed her for the first time, tangling his hands in her hair and pressing soft, hesitant, frequent kisses to her lips as though that would imprint him on her forever.

------

Life is short. Whoever had said that had obviously never conceived the idea of Claire Bennet. Life is long, life is hard, life wears you down until there's nothing left of a person but a passing eidolon floating through the air and trying to keep clinging forever to the surface of the earth. Because she feels like she's flying away, and it scares her.

Nothing's left to keep her grounded, and that terrifies Claire Bennet more than the idea of eternity ever did.

-----

She could only watch as he grew older and she stayed the same. He always offered her reassurances, cupping her face in his hands and pressing his forehead against hers as though to erase the pain he knew she felt. She clung to him while she could, whether he was thirty-six or fifty-three or seventy-nine.

She watched him wither in front of her, and the urge to beg him to stay with her forever kept growing stronger everyday. But she couldn't ask that of him. How could she, when she didn't even want that fate for herself?

-----

She looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize herself anymore. She has the same face, forever young, and her hair's even blonde again. But her eyes are distant as they stare her down, judging but indifferent all at once.

-----

There was a man once. She had been a hundred thirty-six. He had been twenty-three. He had made her smile, he had made her laugh, he had made her feel normal for the first time in decades. She could kiss him in the streets of Chicago and nobody would cast them a second glance. They were just like everybody else.

But she wasn't. One day he proposed, and she had kissed him full-on, whispering _yes_ a thousand times over because that was how it was done. They made love long into the night, heated promises of _till death do us part_ erupting between them in their frenzied passion.

In the morning she left without a word. She never saw him again.

-----

She finds his shirt tucked away, wrinkled and dusty and falling apart but wholly and completely _his_. She clutches it to her, pressing her face into the fabric and breathing in deeply. His scent is gone, lost with the years, but if she lets her mind wander she can almost pretend that he's there, sitting with her and fumbling through the decrepit chest.

Her heart aches for him for the first time in over a century, and she clings to the remnants of him as though that would carry her to wherever he was at.

-----

Only when she's well and truly alone does Claire allow herself to cry. The melancholy sting of tears is the only pain she feels anymore.


End file.
